A true-or-false triplet

Logic Level 3

Consider the following three sentences.

This sentence no verb.
This sentence contains one numeral 2 many.
This sentence contains exactly one nonstandard English gubblick.

Which of them are true?

All three of them are true Only sentence 2 is true Only sentence 3 is true Sentences 2 and 3 are true Sentences 1 and 2 are true None of the sentences are true Only sentence 1 is true Sentences 1 and 3 are true

1 solution

Denton Young
Feb 15, 2020

Sentence 1 has no verb. So it is true.

Sentence 2 does have one numeral that shouldn't be present. So it is true.

Sentence 3 has exactly one word not found in any dictionary. So it is true.

Fun question to think about, but I do have a few issues. 'Sentence' (1) isn't well-formed since it doesn't have a verb, so declaring itself a sentence is a falsehood in the first place. With sentence (3), there is no reason to assume that "gubblick" is a non-sensical stand-in for "word" so we could take it to mean anything, say "potato", in which case the sentence would be false, since it does not contain a nonstandard potato. Still mulling over (2). No need to change the question though, since as is it should generate some interesting comments from others who give it a try. :)

Brian Charlesworth - 1 year, 3 months ago

All of the sentences are actually nonsensical, so none of them can be true OR false.

Joshua Lowrance - 1 year, 3 months ago

I agree with you here. One may assume meaning, but no meaning is actually present as far as I can tell.

Steven Perkins - 1 year, 3 months ago

A true-or-false triplet

1 solution

0 pending reports